


But Pleasures are Like Poppies

by rachel4revenge (orphan_account)



Series: The One Where Sherlock is a Fawn [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Beltane, Fawnlock, Frottage, Interspecies, M/M, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 18:39:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/rachel4revenge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Beltane, and John, as always, follows Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Pleasures are Like Poppies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bennyslegs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bennyslegs/gifts).



> ''But pleasures are like poppies spread,  
> You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;  
> Or like the snow falls in the river,  
> A moment white—then melts for ever."  
> -Robert Burns, Tam o'Shanter

It was Beltane. Normally John wouldn’t have remembered such a thing, something so old-fashioned and frivolous – something his great-aunt would have known and remarked upon a few days after the fact, her voice thin and creaky as the runners on her rocking chair. Nowadays he tried to keep up on all the old festivals, marking them down in the cheap paper calendar hanging from the wall in the kitchen. He wouldn’t have ever done it before the war, before coming back and finding himself tucked away into a tiny cabin on his great-aunt’s property in Scotland. But that was also before Sherlock.

He’d found the name in a dusty book, and it seemed to fit. He answered to it well enough, anyway, with much patience and repetition on John’s part. It was because of Sherlock that he knew it was Beltane, the square letters printed with care in the box under May first. Well, not that Sherlock had told him. But he’d done some reading of his own, while Sherlock fought through the faded children’s books crammed onto the shelves, and he figured he ought to know.

That was why he was so surprised when there came a timid scratching on the door, and he opened it to find Sherlock lingering awkwardly on his stoop, ears flickering and nostrils flared. He was always uneasy near the front door, which John didn’t understand. He stood aside, holding the door wide.

“Come on in. Didn’t think you’d come today.”

Sherlock poked his dark nose forward, slow, and darted inside with the swiftness of a fallow deer. He collected his wayward bundle of limbs in the sitting room and paused again, looking almost coyly over his shoulder. “Why?”

John glanced at the calendar and away again, leaving the door open. Sherlock always got antsy without a proper escape route, and it was a fine day outside anyway. “Erm, well. It’s a holiday, isn’t it? A…” He couldn’t bring himself to call it a pagan holiday. It felt disrespectful, somehow.

“Holl-day.” Sherlock followed the swift glance and tapped across the floor on dainty hooves. He was always changing, back and forth like a feral thing that couldn’t decide on a form it liked best. John silently preferred the hooves – they left less dirt on his carpets, even if they left tiny dents in his pinewood flooring – but his human feet were just as elegant and slim as his deer-limbs.

“Yeah, Beltane. You probably call it something else, though.”

Sherlock sniffed the calendar and sneezed. “Beltane. Yes.” Back to the couch again, sprawling on it like he owned it. He rolled against the cushions, purring in his chest.

“Oi!” John said, without much heat. “Watch it, you’ll scratch the upholstery with those ruddy great antlers of yours.”

He couldn’t really bring himself to disapprove much – they were particularly magnificent today. He’d noticed a month or so ago that they were starting to grow little bumps, especially along the prongs and toward the tips. At first he’d thought they were bits of velvet, or little woody knobs that had something to do with the antlers’ life cycle, but now he could see they had become little buds with red and green tips, looking ready to burst into flower at the slightest provocation.

John sat gingerly in his armchair, set at a right angle to the couch. “So. No celebrations, then?”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. “No day. Night dancing.” He sat up abruptly, hooves clacking against the floor and startling him. He glanced around the room, wide-eyed, until John’s soft chuckle softened the razor-sharp watchfulness in his body. “You come?”

“I… come? Dancing?” John chuckled nervously. “I don’t think so. I’m not really…” He swallowed. “I’m not a part of that world, Sherlock.”

Sherlock scowled. “You come,” he insisted, and sprang up from the couch. He clipped purposefully to where John stood and smoothed his dark fingers over John’s hair in an odd sort of petting motion, as if he were soothing a grouchy child. “You come,” he murmured again, and ducked to rub his cold nose behind John’s ear.

“Hey!” John protested, hands coming up to push at Sherlock’s shoulders. But he lost momentum halfway through, and his fingers curled half-heartedly against his lightly-furred skin instead. The thick winter growth around his throat was almost completely gone, shed to a shorter, lighter spring collar, and it felt silky against his fingertips. Sherlock hummed against his ear and snuffled, patting his face as he moved away.

“Come back.” Then he was slipping around John and outside the door, leaving him standing in the middle of the room with his hands in the air and a very odd sensation in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

John decided that he would lock the door and go to bed early, but instead he left the door open a crack, letting in the sweet smell of spring’s earliest flowers, and sat in his armchair in an extra-thick jumper with a cup of tea. About  half an hour before the sun threatened to dip behind the trees, bleeding the world of light and color, the door creaked and soft footsteps padded across the carpet. John sighed and looked into his tea.

“Look, Sherlock, I really think it’s best if–”

“John.”

He looked up, and swallowed. God, Sherlock looked incredible. He’d changed to feet, the white ankles and long toes looking oddly elegant against John's rag carpet, but looking at them made John’s eyes water and his nose itch, and he knew Sherlock was on the verge of switching back to hooves. He’d washed off his usual stripes and painted on dark ochre and crimson marks in their place; two particularly bold lines trailed from his eyelids down, parallel along his slender throat to disappear into his ruff. They made him look fierce, the blue of his eyes standing out like blazing ice-cold stars. And rising from the curly mop of hair, his antlers flared and spread in graceful curves peppered thickly with enormous flower buds, the hard white tips nearly looping and twisting around themselves like vines.

Sherlock seemed to preen under John’s stare, arching his neck and showing off his antlers to their best effect. “Beltane,” he said, though it sounded different in his mouth, like a word of power and magic, with a rumbling, lilting timbre that John could never hope to replicate.

“When do they bloom?” John found himself asking. “The, um, flowers.” He gestured above his own head to illustrate, and Sherlock snorted with amusement.

“Sun-down.” He held out his hands, the pinkish pads shockingly light against the dark fuzz that covered the rest of them. “You come.”

John set the tea down without even thinking about it and took his hands. They were warm, smoothly calloused, and soft where the short fur bristled up from the skin. “Yes, all right. Just let me get my shoes.”

* * *

Outside, winter’s chill still clung to the evening shadows, and John was grateful for his thick wool socks and extra-heavy jumper. They walked through the tall grasses to the forest’s edge – or rather, John walked and Sherlock darted ahead, never going out of sight and always returning to check that he was coming – and then into the embrace of the trees. It looked intimating from the outside, but past the gloomy eaves the woods was open and lit with flickering fingers of orange from the sinking sun. John kept his eyes to the undergrowth as much as he could, not wanting to snag his foot on something, but it was difficult with Sherlock constantly running back and forth, his pale, bare body lit to brilliant gold in the sunset.

When they came out on the other side, John was slightly out of breath from keeping up. He slowed and then stopped, braced at the crest of a hill, watching Sherlock tumble down it gleefully. There was nothing but open field all the way down to the craggy cliffs, their jagged edges softened by twisted shrubs and trees that clung together in a ragged line, and then the ocean spread out all blue and endless like the edge of the world. John shivered, and continued down the hill.

They sat together in the little copse of trees, Sherlock crouching with nervous energy and John cross-legged in the grass as they listened in silence to the ocean breaking against the cliffs far below. The sun dipped lower and lower, setting fire to the horizon in searing strands of gold and orange-rose. Sherlock tossed his head, catching John’s eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to watch – he was never sure of what was and wasn’t allowed, in this strange fantasy world he’d stumbled onto – but Sherlock made no protest, and the process was too fascinating to ignore. One by one, the petals on Sherlock’s antlers unfurled, exposing their creamy pink centers speckled with black – like apple blossoms, John realized.

By the time the sun disappeared entirely, leaving only the last remnants of color in the sky, Sherlock’s antlers had become more like branches than spikes of bone. He tossed his head, and white petals drifted down, making his face crease with laughter. John smiled to watch, a bit foolishly. When Sherlock caught him looking, the fawn darted in and nuzzled their noses together briefly before jumping up and away, kicking hoofed feet in the air like a giddy child.

Suddenly John sneezed three times in quick succession. He kept his head bowed toward his lap afterward, blinking away the dizziness. The air felt thick and sweet, like molten honey; an increasingly familiar sensation, since he’d started hanging around with a fawn and, occasionally, his other forest friends, most of them looking as if they’d stepped out of the pages of a fantasy novel. He took a few deep breaths, centering himself – he always felt a bit _off_ , when this happened, like he wasn’t supposed to be there – and looked up.

A little way along the cliffs, past the cluster of trees, a bonfire had sprung up out of nowhere. Shadowy figures moved around it, blurry and inconsistent. Sherlock turned and watched him, ears pricked forward.

“You come?”

John shook his head uneasily. “I don’t… it doesn’t feel right, Sherlock. But I’ll stay and watch, yeah?”

The fawn drooped with disappointment, but he didn’t argue. On he went, the dark fur on his legs climbing nearly to his waist, leaping and bounding over the clifftops to join the other fae folk. John, by contrast, got slowly to  his feet and found a comfortable spot a hundred yards away or so, tucked in the lee of a gnarled oak. The roots were surprisingly comfortable, and the branches waved soothingly overhead, lulling him along with the flickering flames and the leaping shadows that fluttered indistinctly at the edges of his vision. He sneezed again and sighed, settling down. He wasn’t supposed to be there, no, but that didn’t mean he was unwelcome. He let his head rest against the rough bark, his body cradled by the sprawling root system, and drifted.

* * *

He woke some time later to a cold nose nudging at his hand. He blinked awake, noting someone – or something – had draped a thick, warm blanket over him sometime during the night. Then his gaze focused on the creature standing in front of him in the cool predawn light, and he had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from shouting. Two black eyes stared back at him, set in a slim brown face with a dark muzzle, and two enormous, spreading antlers crowning above all laden with flowers. It was a sizeable buck, bigger than any of the roe or fallow types that inhabited the woods, and darker. It reared its head back and snorted, shaking its head. Petals drifted down all around John’s head and shoulders, and he realized.

“Sherlock?”

The buck stamped and blew, making him flinch, but it made no move to attack him. It turned its head in a familiar coy way, and he chuckled. “You’re looking well. Have a change of heart during the night?”

As he watched, the buck’s shape blurred. He sneezed twice in quick succession, so overpowering they made his forehead ache, and when he’d recovered it was just Sherlock in front of him, pale eyes alight and toes all brown and green from dancing. The fawn crouched, nosing in close, and John let him nuzzle above his ear with a new kind of softness. “John sleep long time,” Sherlock announced, and folded himself cross-legged on the ground.

“Can you do that all the time?” John asked. He sat up a bit, pushing the blanket down into his lap. “Change to a deer.”

Sherlock nodded. “Tired.” He did look tired, John noted, but happy. “Need much magic.” He reached up with one elegant arm, casual, and plucked a fat blossom from one antler as if he were brushing off dirt.

“Hey! Don’t do that,” John protested. He caught Sherlock’s wrist on instinct, and the fawn stared at him, nostrils flaring.

“Why?”

“They’re… pretty. You should keep them a little while longer.”

Sherlock’s nose wrinkled, and then smoothed again. His head cocked. “John like flowers?”

“Um, yeah. Yes, I do, rather.” He laughed slightly. “Especially on you.”

Sherlock seemed to preen, and he shook his head quickly back and forth, letting loose a little flurry of white petals that spun and drizzled down like soft, warm snowflakes. They caught on John’s cheeks and eyelashes, alighted on his hair, until he was sure he looked like some sort of spring snowman. But he didn’t move to brush them away.

“Thanks,” he said dryly. He reached up, tentative, and trailed a fingertip along the fuzzy arch of one antler. Sherlock made a quick little movement, not quite a shiver, and shifted to sprawl between John’s outstretched legs, cheek pillowed on John’s bicep and antlers spreading up around John’s face like a miniature flower forest.

“John warm,” the fawn mumbled, slurring the little English he possessed. “Sherlock tired.”

“I know you are.” John petted his riot of dark curls, unable to stop himself. Sherlock could be rather sweet when he wished to be, when he was sleepy and lethargic and still buzzing with the last dregs of transformative magic. “Go ahead and take a nap.”

“No nap,” Sherlock huffed. He wriggled a bit, rubbing against John’s body in an unexpectedly sensual way. John swallowed, a strangled sound escaping, and he stiffened, automatically trying to push the fawn away.

“Sherlock –”

“No nap,” he insisted again, lifting his head to glare at John. They were chest-to-chest, Sherlock’s mile-long legs strung out between John’s splayed ones; their noses weren’t even two inches apart. “Sleep tree.”

“Sleep tr– oh.” He craned his neck a bit, looking up along the gnarled girth of the willow they lay against. “No wonder I slept so well.”

“Sleep tree,” Sherlock agreed. He petted John’s jumper-clad chest absently. “John heart? John heart?”

“What?” John looked down, saw nothing out of the ordinary. But he could feel: feel his heart in his chest, beating a little harder than normal, reacting to the warm spread of Sherlock poured over his body. “Oh. Yeah. It’s, um.” He was starting to blush. “Let’s get up, okay Sherlock? We can go back to the house and you can kip on the sofa.”

Sherlock’s head cocked, eyes narrowed to silver slits. “Warm face. John warm face.” He patted his cheek next, fingers lingering on the warm flush of John’s skin. The pads of his fingers were stark and smooth, a shock of sensation; John’s breath hitched, and he turned his face away. It had been too long since he’d felt the touch of something besides his own hand, and the drowsiness of the tree and the crackling energy of magic still thrumming under Sherlock’s skin was making his body react in ways it really shouldn’t.

And, in spite of his sparse understanding of human interaction, Sherlock was picking up on it. He pressed a little closer, nudged John’s ear with his cold nose. It should have been a total turnoff – John was _not_ the type to be sexually interested in animals, for god’s sake – but this was Sherlock. His companion for many months; his friend, dare he say it. A creature wholly of his own, with power and mental faculties that John could only begin to appreciate. In spite of himself, he lifted one hand and trailed it down the soft, downy curve of Sherlock’s spine. The fawn chirped, a low sound of curiosity and pleasure. Against his inner thigh, John could feel something swelling, firm and hot and entirely mirroring the stirring going on in his own trousers.

“Sherlock,” John began, and stopped. He frowned. “Is this the tree?”

“Sleep tree,” Sherlock murmured. His eyes had become heavy-lidded, the pupils spreading into dark pools with a thin ring of silver around the edges. “Not mating-tree.” He touched their noses together, lightly, and pulled away again. “John want? John want Sherlock?”

John took a breath. The answer to that was rather obvious, although he appreciated being asked at all. But instead of answering, he found himself asking one of his own. “What about you, Sherlock? Does Sherlock…” He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. He cupped Sherlock’s cheek, and the fawn didn’t so much as flinch. “Does Sherlock want John?”

Those pale eyelids fell shut, definitive, considering. They flickered slightly as the fawn concentrated, the darker brown pigment of his skin shivering like smooth new leaves in a gentle wind. Then they snapped open again, so sudden John’s whole body tensed between the tree and Sherlock’s warm weight. “Sherlock want.” His neck curved, twisted to rub his antlers gently against the crown of John’s head. More petals fell, catching in the damp seam of John’s lips, and when John licked them away, Sherlock darted in to meet him.

The kiss was clumsy, off-center – but Sherlock persisted, darting little wet licks with the point of his tongue (a perfectly normal, human-shaped tongue), and gradually John coaxed their mouths together. Sherlock seemed eager to taste, so John let him, let him push his tongue into John’s mouth and eat at him, his tongue and teeth and gums, the ridged roof of his mouth. The fawn’s flavor was strange: earthy and sort of sweet, the sweet of the first spring thaw when everything is starting to come alive again, with just a hint of overripe grass. But, far from being cold or harsh or unpleasant, Sherlock’s mouth was the perfect temperature (warm spring sun through a glass window) and his inexperience was made up for by his enthusiasm. John sighed, a hot stream of air against Sherlock’s cheek that made the fawn grunt, and he slid his hands up to cup at the furred stretch of Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock obviously liked that, liked to be stroked as much as any cat, so John scraped his fingernails lightly up and down that downy nape and slid the other hand up to caress the velvety hardness of his antlers. The last few flowers caught on his fingers, falling around them to land on shoulders and backs. The fawn arched at the touch, practically mewling into John’s mouth, and his legs shifted restlessly until one knee was hooked over John’s thigh and that hot, hard place was pressing insistently very near to John’s groin. John swallowed, pulled away, gasped for breath.

“Sherlock – god. Wait.”

The fawn didn’t _want_ to wait, but John pushed at him gently until he craned back, irritation written in every wrinkle stitched across his face. “What for wait?” he demanded. He rocked against John’s thigh in illustration.

“Oh Christ,” John breathed. “Yeah, okay, no. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.” He slid his arms around Sherlock’s slim waist and squeezed. “Up, just for a minute. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

Sherlock watched him with narrow eyes, clearly suspicious, but he let John coax him up onto his knees in the grass, the long, leafy strands of the willow tree brushing the tops of his antlers. He sat stiffly, awkwardly, his hands rubbing anxiously at the muscled tops of his thighs. His prick jutted proudly from his nest of thick, dark pubic hair, deep brownish-red at the tip at difficult to ignore. From the few glimpses John had gotten during their acquaintance (very rare – the hair there was thick and coarse, and Sherlock was mostly definitely a “grower”), he knew the foreskin was much like his own, if a bit more downy. Dark brown curls at the base feathered to a lighter dirty-blond fuzz near the top, and beneath, the hard, flushed column was virtually human. He licked his lips in spite of himself, and adjusted himself in his trousers.

Sherlock cleared his throat, obviously impatient. “Right, sorry.” John flushed and set to undressing. In spite of the brisk air off the sea, he felt overwarm; when he tugged his jumper over his head, he sighed at the cool whisper of the wind down his humid shirt collar. Sherlock’s eyes lit up at this, all in favor of shedding John’s clumsy, bulky mimicry of fur. But when he tried to reach out and pluck at the buttons, he couldn’t quite figure out the mechanism, and John batted his hands away to do it himself. The fawn pouted momentarily at being deprived this opportunity for discovery – but then John slid the shirt reluctantly from his arms, and Sherlock was entirely diverted.

It was fairly recent still, the scar: it blazed a livid, angry red from the pale skin of his shoulder, a fat pock mark in the fleshy, muscled spot beneath his collarbone. The back was far worse, a spiderwebbing exit wound that looked as if a blowtorch had been taken to John’s skin, leaving the melted remnants to be sewn back together by a haphazard novice. It hadn’t, really – it had just been very, very poor conditions, and poor lighting, and two infections that had kept John in bed for nearly half a year before being shipped back to the UK for rounds of physical therapy.

Showing it to anyone else would have been unthinkable, but Sherlock didn’t make John nervous the way humans did. He watched calmly as the fawn leaned closer, nostrils flaring. Sherlock sniffed lightly at the scar, his nose nearly touching the knotted skin – and then, to John’s surprise, made a pained sound deep in his throat.

“John hurt? When John hurt?”

“A while ago,” John said, startled by Sherlock’s obvious distress. The fawn’s brows were drawn down low, eyes wide and mouth pinched unhappily; even more telling, his ears flicked back and forth constantly, as if he weren’t sure where to focus. He reached for his shirt. “Here, I’ll put this back on–”

“No!” _That_ was a word Sherlock knew well, and he put it to good use regularly. He backed it up by snatching John’s shirt from his hands and flinging it behind them, spreading out in the grass like a great crumpled bird. “John hurt? Now hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” John assured him quickly. “Well, not much. Only on rainy days.” He paused, chewing his lip, and reached out. “Give me your hand?”

Sherlock regarded him warily, but he allowed John to take his hand and press it fairly firmly against the little scar. The fawn made another sound, this one closer to a whine, but he didn’t pull away.

“There,” John murmured, soothing. “It’s fine, yeah? It’s all fine.”

“All fine,” Sherlock echoed. He rubbed the spot gently with his fingertips, though John barely felt it, his skin was so desensitized in that area. Then, with uncharacteristic tenderness, he leaned closer and lipped the spot, not quite a kiss, but sort of tasting and feeling with his lips. John inhaled a bit raggedly, the sight alone coaxing another ripple of interesting through him. Sherlock’s eyes, silver-black, darted up to his. A sly smile spread across his face. “Want. Want John.”

“Say: I want you,” John corrected, wondering how he could even attempt an English lesson when Sherlock was licking his way down to the nut-brown areola of his nipple.

The fawn exhaled against his chest, making goosebumps rise all along John’s arms and legs. “I want you,” he growled, and his voice was dark and smoky in his chest.

“Oh god,” John choked. No matter how poor his verbal communication was, there was no doubt Sherlock was entirely a man, even one with more fur than most men had. He took Sherlock’s jaw in his hand and drew him up for another kiss.

This time, there was less exploration and more devouring. Sherlock wrangled with him, tugging at his arms and rubbing himself against the bare expanse of John’s torso, and when John finally tumbled him to the ground, they were out of the tree’s cloaking privacy. Sherlock sprawled out willingly, half in the grass and half on the plaid check of John’s discarded shirt. His skin and fur soaked up the sun, turning golden under its touch, as John bent and explored the fawn’s narrow chest with his lips and tongue.

Sherlock arched under him, and John sneezed forcefully into his navel. The fawn jerked, this time with reproach, and John stroked the lightly furred skin of Sherlock’s legs in apology. “It’s the magic,” he explained, his thumb following the groove of muscle in Sherlock’s inner thigh to rest on the sharp jut of the iliac crest. “I think I’m allergic.” The long, prehensile toes curled around John’s ankle, and the fawn blinked at him, unimpressed. “Yeah, alright, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch.” Eyes crinkling, he bent again, combing his fingers into the thatch of hair at Sherlock’s groin.

When the fawn was flaccid, there was barely anything to see here. The long fur kept him quite comfortably covered, and John had never really had a proper look at what was hiding under it (not that he’d been trying). Now, bent close like this, he could smell the powerful musk caught in the curling hair – curly like the hair on his head, and not the average human’s pubic hair – and feel the taut weight of his bollocks, completely disguised between his legs. Sherlock hummed and shifted, restless, but permitting the exploration as John cupped their heavy mass in his hand before sliding up, around the furred base of his prick. There he gripped, keeping one eye on Sherlock’s face, and dragged his hand up, watching as the downy foreskin slipped up entirely, concealing the flushed head and retracting again smoothly. Sherlock cooed and lifted his hips, head lolling comfortably on the grass. A little apprehensive – humanish Sherlock might be, in some ways, but in others he was definitely animal – John bowed his head and let his lips rest on the very tip of Sherlock’s prick.

He was pleasantly surprised. He knew what pre-ejaculate tasted like (his own, at least), and while it wasn’t unpleasant, neither was it a flavor he’d want in his ice cream. But Sherlock’s was rather different. It was salty, yes, and pungent, but more in the way of the metallic burst of blood, or the sharp bite of fresh sweat. And, underlying it, the same grassy sweetness that lingered in his mouth.

John looked up, lips still lingering against the fragrant slit. Sherlock’s eyes were wide and blown completely black, the whites bare slivers at the corners of his eyes, and his brow was wrinkled adorably with confusion. His ears flicked back and forth uneasily, and John petted the fur on his tummy gently.

“Haven’t you ever done this before?” he asked. His lips buzzed against the head as he spoke, and Sherlock’s face contorted. “I’ll take that as a no.” He paused, still cradling the stiff weight in the scroll of his fingers. “Do you want me to stop?” The fawn shook his head violently. “Right then.” Turning back to his task, John slid the foreskin back – he wasn’t quite ready to fellate a whiskery penis – and sealed his mouth over the head, tongue sliding south to rub the frenulum in firm, generous strokes.

Sherlock keened and clawed at the dirt, thighs spreading wider as he dragged his toes up the backs of John’s calves. Even with his jeans separating skin from skin, the sensation crawled up his spine and sank into his throat, and he pulled off to nip at Sherlock’s flat belly, up until he could plunge their mouths together again.

Sherlock’s hands wandered, now, smoothing over his chest and shoulders, feeling out the contours of John’s ribs and the divot of his navel. John braced himself on his elbows and nuzzled the curve of Sherlock’s neck. The fawn was searing hot beneath him, every inch of skin covered with a pale, fine down that made it feel like he was laying on silk, or the smoothest, softest flannel. Here and there it thickened to dark brown curls – around his neck and down the center of his chest, under his arms, at his groin, and up in a gradated arrow to the center of his belly. His scent was strongest in these places, and John spent a long time nuzzling into the hollow of his throat and up behind his spreading, shell-like ears as Sherlock hummed and wriggled underneath him. John found the pale fuzz was soft and inoffensive on his tongue, even moving against the grain, and he spent long minutes licking and sucking that pale throat, the muscles and tendons beneath flickering in an irresistible restlessness of spirit.

But soon Sherlock began pushing at John’s shoulders and making unhappy noises, and John tore himself away with a gasp. “I’m sorry, I’m – this is probably all wrong for you.” He let Sherlock push him up, but before shame could form a cold coil in his belly, the fawn was rolling him over onto his back and tugging at the stiff waistband of his jeans.

“Off,” he demanded, shifting so that his erection rubbed against John’s thigh. “Off, off John!”

“ _Oh_. Yes.” John wrestled with button and zip, and shoved the entire mess off his legs. He let Sherlock pull him back down again, on their sides and belly-to-belly in the warm grass. “Like this?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, chin dipped down so he could observe their bodies side by side. John looked positively naked in comparison, with only the faintest wisps of golden hair on his chest and stomach, and dusting his lower legs. A slightly thicker, darker thatch wisped around the base of his erection, but it was nothing to Sherlock’s rich, lush fur. The fawn reached out, more curious than tentative, and brushed the pads of his fingers over the light trail of hair leading to John’s groin. John exhaled, stirring the dark curls hanging over Sherlock’s face, and the fawn’s ramrod gaze darted back up.

“It’s good,” John assured him, smiling a bit. “You can explore to your heart’s content.”

“Heart.” Sherlock’s hand dragged up, spreading tingles all through his body, and placed his hand over John’s heart.

“Yeah, that’s right. And here.” He tapped Sherlock’s chest, right over a dark patch of hair. He ended up stroking his fingers through it, and the fawn purred and pressed closer. “How do you do this? Fawns, I mean.” At Sherlock’s quizzical look he added, “Show me?”

“Show John… mate?” Sherlock ventured. He seemed thrown – which, given John’s role as the “instructor” in their relationship, was excusable.

“Yes.” John was blushing again, drawing Sherlock’s fingers back to his cheek. “If you like.”

The fawn burst into a wide grin, teeth blindingly white against the darker, almost brownish skin of his lips, and leaned in close. He kissed John firmly, forcefully, pressing the length of his body to the length of John’s. Their pricks brushed together inadvertently, and John couldn’t swallow the sharp sound that rose up in his throat. The downy softness of Sherlock’s foreskin on his own prick was _amazing_.

“Oh, god,” he mumbled, his voice mostly muffled by Sherlock’s eager mouth. He grabbed the fawn’s hip, Sherlock grabbed him back, and they rolled together so that John was on his back in the grass, Sherlock sprawled above him with his thighs spread wide around John’s hips. Their tongues trailed together, tasting languidly, and Sherlock ground against him. John squeezed his eyes and his jaws shut tightly as the fur of Sherlock’s belly rubbed his sensitive prick exactly right.

“Good?” Sherlock was staring down at him, eyes heavy-lidded but still sharp with awareness. John’s fingers found purchase on the slim column of his waist and held on.

“Yes. Very good.” He coaxed Sherlock forward again, and the fawn’s eyes fluttered shut.

Sherlock leaned down, bracing his hands wide on the ground, and fell into an easy, rolling rhythm. John fumbled between them until he could cradle their pricks together in one hand, and _then_ , dear god, he was drowning in it. Sherlock cried out, head back and antlers spreading out dark against the azure sky, and rutted into John’s hand, all loose limbs and flushed, damp skin; John could hardly breathe to look at him.

“You’re fantastic,” he gasped, hips pitching up off the ground to grind them together. “God, look at you, you lovely wild thing.”

Sherlock whimpered, teeth peeking out to worry at his bottom lip. John tugged him down to lie on his chest and wrapped his free arm around the smooth expanse of his back, lips worrying at the delicate skin of one ear. “John.” Sherlock turned his head, nuzzled close for a sloppy kiss as his movements grew less and less coordinated. John’s arm slid, spread, fingers sloping down to grasp at his arse. Sherlock’s tail flicked in response, and with a bit of a punch to the gut, John wondered what it would be like to spread him open and press inside.

“Oh fuck,” he wheezed, cock jerking in his overstretched hand. Sherlock whined and looked down, forehead against John’s cheek, as John spurted his release between their bellies, smearing white all over his hand and Sherlock’s prick.

The fawn began to slow, panting fiercely against John’s cheek, but John gripped him and forcibly rubbed their bodies together in a hard, quick rhythm until Sherlock’s face was screwing up and his release was pulsing hot and slick onto John’s stomach. John’s head fell back into the grass and he shuddered, oversensitive, as Sherlock squirmed through his aftershocks.

“Easy,” he murmured, coming his fingers through the curls around the base of his antlers. “Just relax.” The fawn shuddered a few more times and laid quietly, head pillowed on John’s shoulder. John held still, mindful of the antlers, and laid long, petting strokes down Sherlock’s back. “All right?”

One of Sherlock’s hands came up, searching, and found his mouth. John kissed it on impulse. “Quiet,” the fawn slurred. “Nap.”

John couldn’t help but giggle a bit at Sherlock’s petulance. He continued to pet him as the fawn gathered his breath and his wits, then gently rolled him over onto his back. Sherlock looked up reproachfully with liquid eyes. “Don’t look at me like that,” John murmured. His thumb found the sharp angle of Sherlock’s cheekbone and stroked along it, tender. “That stuff will get all crusty and horrible in your fur if we let it dry.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose in protest, but he seemed to understand as John used the hem of his discarded shirt to rub his belly clean. He wiped himself down next, though he nabbed a tiny drop of Sherlock’s release with his pinky for a taste. Compared to the pre-ejaculate it was nearly tasteless, sort of creamy and sweet with only the aftertaste of damp grass. The fawn was watching him, not perturbed in the least, but John blushed (again) anyway.

“Sorry. I was curious.”

“Curious,” Sherlock echoed. He smiled slyly and stretched out on the ground, hands rubbing up and down the newly-cleaned stretch of his belly. “John curious still?”

“I don’t think I can go again so soon, love,” John laughed, though he laid down again, the curves and planes of his body filling in the empty spaces of Sherlock’s.

The fawn cocked his head, nearly prodding John in the head with one prong of his antlers. “Love?”

“Um.” Now he’d torn it. John propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed one dark, arching brow with his thumb. “Yes. It means I like you.”

“John like Sherlock before,” the fawn announced. “Like Sherlock before mate, like Sherlock better after?”

John wrinkled his nose. “A bit, I guess. Love is more… here.” He patted Sherlock’s chest, over his heart. “Love means I’m in here, and you’re in here.” He tapped his own sternum.

“I am… inside?” His face drew into a confused frown.

John’s lips twitched. “Sort of. It means… I want you.”

“Want.” The fawn nodded, remembering their use of the word earlier. “Want for friend?”

“I want you for my friend,” John agreed. “And…” Oh dear Christ, what was he getting himself into? “And I want you for my mate.”

Sherlock seemed to consider this. Then he pulled John down, holding his head against his chest. “John inside, always?”

John closed his eyes, breathed in the wild, woodsy scent of him. “Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The fawnlock idea belongs to paula and budden on tumblr (check out fawnlock.tumblr.com if you haven't already, it's completely lovely!) I've taken some liberties with the original concepts, like the shapeshifting and the sprouting antlers and the body paint and the magic and.... basically everything. Oops. XD Had a lot of fun with it, expect a bit of a angsty/porny sequel soon!


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